SuperZero (school edition) Read online

  “There’s no use playing games. Four of your classmates have come forward and given me your name. Now, why don’t you give me one reason I shouldn’t expel you right now?”

  Zed looked at Mr Minardi.

  Ulric Chilvers had won.

  Ulric Chilvers would always win.

  Mr Minardi telephoned his mother and told her about the broken windows and the graffiti. He told her that he’d have to be sent home. They were busy preparing for the talent concert, and there was no time to deal with him now. Tomorrow, after the concert, they would all sit down and work out what was to be done.

  Zed’s mom was crying and shouting and crying again when she fetched him and drove him home. Zed never said a word. He hardly even heard what she said.

  His mom parked in their driveway. It was the middle of the day and she had to return to work, but when she came home … her voice trailed away.

  “Mom!” Zed interrupted suddenly. “You know that music you sometimes play?”

  “What? Which music? Never mind music …”

  “That music. You know. It goes, like, um, da-daa-da da-daa-da-da, da-da-da-daa.”

  She looked at him as though he was mad.

  “That? That sounds like Dvorak. But …”

  “Which one? What’s it called? Please, it’s important.”

  The tears began to well in her eyes again. Much later, when Zed looked back on it all, he would realise how hard it was for her – this terrible worry, the awful loneliness of dealing with it all on her own. Later, Zed would think: I’m not the superhero in this family. She is.

  But right now there was only one thing on his mind.

  “Please, Mom. Please!”

  “It’s … the ninth symphony, I think. Dvorak’s ninth symphony.”

  Zed ran inside, leaving his mother with tears rolling down her cheeks, and through to the lounge to his mother’s music collection.

  There was some preliminary music he didn’t recognise, but he listened patiently and … there! That was it! That was the tune! That was the same snatch of music Ulric Chilvers had been playing. But why? Why that tune?

  He had never really listened to music before, not like this, not with such intensity. It seemed to swirl with mysteries, with depths and layers. But if it held a secret, it held it locked up tight. In frustration he turned to the CD cover.

  DVORAK’S NINTH SYMPHONY

  (“From the New World”)

  Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antonin Chunko

  Zed stared. What did that mean? He took down a thick hardcover book titled The Comprehensive Guide to Classical Music and flipped to the chapter on Dvorak. There it was.

  “Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony is commonly subtitled ‘From the New World’, mark­ing the moment when the composer travelled from Eastern Europe to America, and celebrating the power of the individual to reinvent himself.”

  The New World.

  The New Worlde.

  Buckman’s New-Worlde Circus.

  Zed had to think straight. Whatever the answer was, it had to be found at Buckman’s New-Worlde Circus. He had seen Daniel Dundee there, and he had seen Ulric Chilvers there skulking through the shadows to seek out one of the performers. Everything led back there.

  Zed turned back to the bookshelf and took down The Greater Oxford Dictionary, and turned to “G”. He had to get to the circus, but first he had to find out a few things. He had been ignorant for too long. What had his grandma said? He must study, he must prepare. He must keep one step ahead.

  Zed hadn’t managed it so far. But maybe, just maybe he could catch up.

  After reading

  4.

  Why does Zed say that “Chilvers will always win”. How is he feeling at this moment?

  5.

  How does Zed manage to move from Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, “from the New World” to Buckman’s New-Worlde Circus in his thoughts? Is there any connection do you think?

  6.

  What advice did his grandma give to Zed?

  7.

  Why must Zed “keep one step ahead” at this point?

  8.

  Explain the expression “The tide begins to turn”.

  Before reading

  1.

  What is an “emergency fund”? How important is it to have one?

  While reading

  2.

  What do you think Zed should do to stay ahead? Do you think his idea of going to the circus is a good one? Why?

  10. The storm breaks

  Zed sat in the back of the taxi and watched the traffic flash by in the opposite direction. It was early evening and people were returning home from work. Not Zed. Zed was on his way to work.

  He had called the cab from home and he would pay for it with the money he had retrieved from the emergency fund in the plastic bag sticky-taped to the back of the U-bend under the kitchen sink. This counted as an emergency.

  He had dressed in black jeans and a black sweatshirt and a pair of dark blue trainers. Then he had gone outside to the garage and he had knelt down beside the box of comics. Zed had shut his eyes and leant his head against the painted wood of the box and murmured under his breath: “Please, Dad. Please help me. Help me do the right thing.”

  Then he had walked out of the garage, away from the box that smelt of sunlight and contained all the world inside it.

  It is time, Zed had thought, for me to meet my destiny.

  The cab dropped him at the circus grounds. The company was preparing for the evening’s show. Tattooed men with bandannas carried heavy items, people swept, someone was repairing a section of the tent. There were heavy grey clouds building and the air felt close and prickly: a storm was coming.

  No one paid much attention to Zed. He walked briskly and confidently and looked as though he knew where he was going. Zed was learning fast.

  Zed walked through the big tent where workers in blue overalls swept the wooden stands. People stood on narrow platforms suspended from the high tent-top, checking the wiring on the lights. Four very short people trotted past wearing shiny gold bodysuits and crash helmets and capes embroidered with emblems of round black objects. He guessed they must be the human cannonballs from Big Bertha and her Flying Human Cannonballs.

  Zed passed through the tent, down the fenced-off walkway, out into the open space in front of the trailers and caravans. He passed the Great Buckman’s trailer. The door was shut and the blinds were drawn. He scanned along the row and saw what he was looking for: the caravan Ulric Chilvers had been visting. Now Zed began to feel nervous. The skies were darkening. He glanced at the names on the doors of the trailers as he passed.

  Big Bertha.

  Carvella, The World’s Fattest Woman.

  Sello, the Human Cell.

  He stopped at the fifth caravan. He climbed the steps. He raised his hand to knock.

  “Come in,” said a voice from the caravan.

  He opened the door and stepped into Madame Hoblidaya’s home.

  She looked just as she had the last time, with purple turban and glowing rings. “So,” she said. “I thought you would come.”

  “I need answers,” said Zed. The light behind him threw a weak grey shadow into the darkness of the room. He squared his shoulders and tried his line again. “I’ve come for some answers.”

  “Please,” said Madame Hoblidaya. “Sit.”

  “I’ll stand,” said Zed. “I don’t trust you. You are the friend of my enemy.”

  “No. I warned you about him. I told you: ‘Danger is afoot’.”

  “I thought you were talking about the crocodile,” said Zed indignantly.

  “Chester? Chester wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Madame Hoblidaya. “But him – he would. Especially, he would hurt you.”

  “But why? Who is he?”

  Madame Hoblidaya shook her head. “He is his father’s son. He is the darkness made flesh. He is the child of evil.”

  Zed felt a shudder run through him, standing there in the gloom, breat
hing the thick, choking altar fumes, listening to such things and such a voice.

  “Or at least,” said Madame Hoblidaya more normally, “that’s what he’d say. And some of it’s true. Now close the door and sit down, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Zed did as she said and Madame Hoblidaya switched on a small electric lamp with a yellow shade. The caravan filled with honey-coloured light.

  “That boy is dangerous,” she said, “and he will get more dangerous. At the moment he’s only just discovering what he can do, discovering the pleasures of breaking things, of ruining and spoiling and smashing and hurting things.”

  She took a breath.

  “When you came to see me the other night, I felt the white light around you. That boy has black light.”

  “But who is he?” insisted Zed. “How do you know him?”

  Outside, above them, there was a distant, approaching rumble of thunder.

  “His father worked here at the circus many years ago. It was a different place then. Different times. The circus was a refuge for those who didn’t belong elsewhere.”

  There was another long, low roll of thunder, coming closer. The wind was picking up.

  “Please,” he said. “I need to know what you can tell me. Please.”

  Madame Hoblidaya put her long, white hands over her face.

  “His father’s name was Edrich Krasner,” she said. “He was the greatest hypnotist in the world. He’d meet you and shake your hand and you’d be under his spell. I fell in love with him. I knew it was bad for me, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  Madame Hoblidaya stared into the honey-coloured light on the wall, lost in memories of long ago.

  “Why was it bad for you?”

  “He was a bad man. He enjoyed having people under his control. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted the whole world in his power. And he said he knew how to do it.”

  “How?”

  “He said there were frequencies – sound waves – so high and so low you couldn’t hear them with your ears, but transmitted in the right combinations they change the frequencies of your brainwaves. He said it was stronger, deeper than hypnosis. Even hypnotised people are still basically the same person, but with these frequencies you could take over other people’s minds. You could turn them into … zombies!” Madame Hoblidaya shuddered. “Oh, he was mad!” she cried. “Mad!”

  Zed was on his feet now, the blood draining from his face. There was a crack of thunder so near the windows rattled.

  “The last time I saw him, he was working on a machine to embed those frequencies in ordinary music. I begged him to stop. I begged him.”

  “Where is he now?” Zed was almost shouting now. The thunder was breaking and rolling over the circus.

  “I don’t know!” cried Madame Hoblidaya. “He left! Twelve years ago! He took his son, just a baby wrapped in blankets, and walked into the night. I never saw him again. Neither of them! Until Monday.”

  “Ulric?”

  “That wasn’t his name then, but I knew him the moment he arrived here, even before he walked through that door. I felt it. I felt the dark light. His father’s dark light.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “He wanted answers. Like you do. He wanted to know about me. He wanted to know about my powers. Why not? What boy is never curious about his mother?”

  Rain blew against the window like a sudden handful of gravel.

  “He’s your son!”

  “No,” said Madame Hoblidaya. “He was born of me, but he is only his father’s son. I mean as little to him as any other living creature does.”

  She burst into tears, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. Zed put his arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry … I’m so sorry.”

  And at that moment the door burst open with a bang like thunder. There was a rush of cold air and the caravan shook on its wheels as something heavy and violent entered.

  A roar filled the room and something struck Zed, knocking him against the window. There was another roar, only half human, and a pair of hands. They were huge hands, hairy, brutal hands. He hadn’t seen those hands for a while.

  They were the hands of Daniel Dundee.

  After reading

  3.

  Why do you think Zed is dressed all in black?

  4.

  No one thinks anything of it when Zed walks through the circus area. What important discovery has he made?

  5.

  Provide three adjectives to describe the kind of a person Ulric’s father was.

  6.

  Why would a circus be a “refuge (place where they can feel safe) for those who didn’t belong elsewhere”? Give an example of someone who might be treated unkindly or be unable to get a job in the ordinary world.

  7. a)

  What is a hypnotist?

  7. b)

  Who has been hypnotised so far?

  8.

  Which “frequencies” is Ulric using to take over people’s minds? Where are they hidden?

  9.

  What is the most important piece of information that Madame Hoblidaya gives Zed?

  10.

  Name the literary device: “I felt his dark light.”

  Before reading

  1.

  In your reading or TV viewing you will have come across many dangerous sea creatures. Name two of these and what makes them dangerous.

  While reading

  2.

  What makes Zed and Daniel change their views of each other?

  11. The fire underwater

  Zed heard Madame Hoblidaya screaming in the background. Daniel Dundee lifted him by the throat and carried him to the door and threw him down the stairs. Zed sprawled on the grass, gasping in the torrential rain. Night and the storm had arrived together. Lightning jagged through the dark sky above the caravan as Daniel Dundee vaulted down the stairs.

  Zed rolled and clambered to his feet. Daniel Dundee lunged, slipping on the wet turf but catching Zed hard enough to send him flying back against Sello’s trailer. Daniel Dundee stalked toward him, massive fists clenched at his sides, face contorted in animal fury. The rain rolled down his face like tears.

  “You. Leave. Her. Alone.”

  He raised his fists above his head and brought them crashing down together.

  Zed had his back to the trailer. There was nothing he could do but drop to the ground as Daniel’s fists smashed into the sidewall. On hands and knees Zed scrambled under the trailer.

  Daniel Dundee dropped down but the trailer was too low for him to crawl after Zed. For a moment he managed to seize Zed’s leg, but Zed slammed his free heel against his wrist until he let go.

  Zed didn’t pause. He scrabbled under the trailer, through the beige dust which was already turning to mud, and rolled out the other side, back into the sheets of falling rain. Sello the Human Cell was there, bending over a large plastic portapool, wearing a yellow raincoat with a hood and carrying a bucket of fish. He looked up, confused, as Zed emerged from beneath the trailer. Then he looked over Zed’s shoulder and his eyes widened. Daniel Dundee came round the corner bent over, charging, head lowered like a bull as the lightning lit the sky.

  Zed hardly had time to lift his hands before Daniel Dundee hit him, square on.

  The impact knocked him off his feet, upwards and backwards.

  At last, he was flying.

  With a splash that sent a flume of water high in the air Zed landed in the plastic portapool. The water closed over his head and his body went limp. It felt good to be underwater. It was quiet. Nothing hurt.

  Then he felt the movement. It wrapped and twisted round him as though the water had muscles and the muscles were contracting. Zed opened his eyes and saw a writhing brown glistening mass, bodies intertwined and coil­ing, eyes and mouths and teeth.

  All he could see was eel.

  And then the shocks began. A sharp hot pain up his spine to his brain, and as each eel discharged its current his muscles seized and spasmed
. His back arched. All the fluid in his body, his blood, even the tears in his eyes seemed to boil. He opened his mouth to scream, but there was no sound except the roiling of the water and the humming in his ears.

  And then, just before Zed passed out, the pain stopped. There was a perfect, perfect silence. He was floating far above his body, high in the wet night sky, looking down on himself lying arms outspread in a pool of electric eels, his legs jerking uncontrollably as volts surged through him. Zed wished he could stay there, hovering above himself. He wished he never had to return to his twisted, twitching, tortured body.

  But of course he did.

  When he woke, Zed was lying on a pile of towels on the floor of Madame Hoblidaya’s caravan. Madame Hoblidaya was bending over him, slapping his cheeks. Behind her he saw the anxious hovering face of Sello the Human Cell. And behind that, looming over all, was Daniel Dundee.

  Zed struggled to sit upright. Firmly Madame Hoblidaya pressed him back down. “Lie still,” she said. “You’re safe.”

  “No,” he gasped. “Behind you …”

  Madame Hoblidaya let him sit up. She spoke in a soft, comforting voice. “Don’t be afraid. He was trying to protect me. He thought you were sent by Ulric.”

  “What?!”

  “He has been here every night this week,” said Madame Hoblidaya. “Protecting me. And the animals. You’re not the only one who has been keep­ing an eye on Ulric.”

  Zed couldn’t grasp what he was hearing. Her voice seemed to be coming from very far away. There was a hissing sound in his ears – the kind of sound you hear when everything is so silent the silence sounds like sound. Zed struggled to his feet and faced Daniel Dundee.

  “But – but you’re one of Ulric Chilvers’ gang! You – you burnt down the school!”

  Daniel Dundee’s brow clouded.

  “Me?”

  “Jerome saw you there.”

  Daniel Dundee nodded slowly. It was plain he didn’t do a lot of talking. “I was there,” he said, “to stop him hurting the animals.”